This page is designed to assist
and hopefully inspire educators teaching mythology, whether they are teaching
to kindergarteners, high school AP classes, students at university and
beyond.Of course we’d love it if you
worked with our novels – and Jocasta: The Mother-Wife of Oedipus has been used
by several high schools to complement Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, while several university students have consulted our
Niobe trilogy – Children of Tantalus,The
Road to Thebes, and Arrows
of Artemis – while doing their theses.But this page is more about pushing our
books.Myths, the stories that have
inspired us for so long that they have been passed down for millennia, provide
a common understanding of our world.They show us how people thought and behaved in the past; they enrich
our present.

If you have lesson plans or
other suggestions such as links to include, or questions to pose, please
contact us at tapestryofbronze (at)
yahoo (dot) com. We hope to be able to update this page frequently with
new material.

Resources at the Tapestry of Bronze

Poetry Contest: The Tapestry of Bronze has a semi-annual Odes to Olympians contestwith a division for those under 18 so that students can
participate without having to compete against adults.Many educators and homeschoolers enter
poems into this contest, which uses the principle of competition from
classical Greece to encourage excellence.

Pronunciation: The names from the Greek myths can be intimidating.We provide a pronunciation guidefor those who are concerned about saying these words aloud.

Using Mythology in Your Classes

ART:

Artists have been inspired by mythology for
millennia.Color, draw, paint or even
model in clay a Greek god or hero – or a scene from a myth.

Create masks based on the different
heroes and/or gods and pretend to be them.

DRAMA:

Many plays, ancient and modern,
are based on these myths.Assign parts
and do readings.Perform them.Watch them in theaters or as film.One class at Bishop Fenwick High School in
Peabody, MA, has madeJocasta into ayoutube
video.

CONSULTING THE ORACLE:

Interpret a prophecy from the Oracle at Delphi.Famous instances from Herodotus’ The Histories include Croesus’
question about whether or not to go to war, in which the Oracle answered: “If
you do, a great empire will be destroyed” and the Athenians’ asking for
guidance when the Persians threatened: “Look to the wooden walls.”(The answers turned out to be that Croesus
destroyed his own empire by going to war, and the Athenians finally decide
that the wooden walls that would save them belonged to their fleet of
ships.)Laius of Thebes learned that
his son would murder him and marry his mother (Laius’ response was to send
his infant son away to be exposed to die on a mountain.)

Debate or assign essay questions
about how the ancients might have interpreted these oracles.Example questions include:

1. How do you tell what they mean?

2. How would you change your behavior
if you received one of these oracles? (Note that not changing the behavior at
all can be a valid response; there were many, especially among the followers
of Socrates, who thought the divine pronouncements were dubious.)

EXPLORING CRIME & PUNISHMENT:

Some of the stories are scandalous from today’s
point of view – even from the perspective of back then, too.

Do mock interviews of the gods/heroes and ask them
to defend what they did.Possible
settings include modern-day talk shows and/or a courtroom trial.

Consider punishments that were handed
out, and debate or write essays about whether the sentences were just and if
they served as deterrants:

To mortals while still alive:

Death

Maiming (Oedipus blinded himself)

Exile (Oedipus went into exile)

Fines or Offerings to Temples

Labors (the labors of
Hercules/Herakles)

To mortals after death:

Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a
steep hill for all eternity, only to have it roll back to the ground just as
he reaches the top

Tantalus reaching for fruit and
drink that always move away

To the immortals, who do not die

Zeus (Jupiter) imprisoned his
father Kronos (Saturn)

Hephaestus caught his wife
Aphrodite and her lover Ares in a net

Prometheus was chained to a rock
and had his liver devoured every day (until he was liberated by Hercules)

Gods frequently punished the
mortals favored by other gods, as mortals made easier targets.

Literature

This subject is vast so we
expect to add to it frequently.In the
meantime, here’s a start of the topics that could be used for discussion, for
essays, tests and homework, organized by literary work.

Oedipus Rexby Sophocles

1. In Oedipus Rex,
blindness is a recurring theme.Who is
blind literally?Who is blind
figuratively?Who has the clearest
vision of what is happening?

2. How many people does Oedipus blame for his problems
before he blames himself?

3. If Oedipus was going to the oracle at Delphi to ask
about his parentage, then why did he marry a woman much older than
himself?

4. Would Oedipus have been better off had he not tried to
avoid his fate?

A Don's Life: Mary Beard’s blog about adventures
of teaching the classics.

The Teaching Company: This has great sets of
lectures by many professors on all sorts of subjects – we’ve watched nearly
all the lecture sets on ancient Greece and archaeology. Yes, you have to pay,
but this is great value for the money (as long as you wait for your course to
be on sale).

The
Tapestry of Bronze is a series of interlocking novels set in ancient Greece,
starting several generations before the Trojan War.
Archaeological evidence indicates that this “Golden Age of Heroes” aligns with Bronze Age
dates. Our series forms a tapestry, because the books tie together,
though each novel focuses on one strand of story. Jocasta, Children
of Tantalus, The Road to Thebes and
Arrows of Artemis are available for purchase today. And more
are in the works!

Not
sure if you’ll like the books?Then
electronically download a sample at Amazon.Clicking on the covers below will take you to that company’s website.

The Tapestry of Bronze is a series
of novels set in Bronze Age Greece.